While an inclination to a healthy life for foods is being intensified in recent years, an interest is being raised in the vegetable juices or soups, through which many vegetables can be easily eaten. Another interest is also heightened to an electric cooker such as the juicer or mixer, by which those vegetable juices or soups can be home-made.
In the prior art, the electric cooker having the functions to cut, crush and agitate the foods (or food materials) is well known as the mixer (as referred to Patent Document 1, for example). There is also known the soup cooker which is provided with the heating-warming means in addition to food (or food-material) cutting, pulverizing and agitating functions, and can cook soup according to a cooking program (as referred to Patent Document 2, for example).
Even if a fresh juice is made by the aforementioned mixer of the conventional structure, however, the juice has its food components progressed in decomposition and oxidation as the time elapses, so that the nourishing components do nothing but decrease.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-206907, therefore, there has been proposed the electric cooker which is enabled to prevent the oxidation of the nourishing components and to increase the same components thereby to prepare soups of high nutrition values.
The electric cooker, as proposed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-206907, comprises: a body having a motor mounted therein; a container removably mounted on said body; a cutter connected, when mounted on the body of said container, to said motor so that it rotates to cut a food in said container; heating means for heating the inside of said container; a cover for covering said container; temperature detecting means for detecting the temperature in said container; and control means for performing the control of said heating means on the basis of a signal of said temperature detecting means, wherein said control means is provided in its cooking program with a suction stroke of evacuating the pressure in said container into a low-enzyme state and an enzyme reaction step of promoting the enzyme reaction of the food.
Here, the aforementioned suction stroke is performed by suction means having a main component of a suction pump arranged in a cover, and this suction means comprises: a suction pump; a suction port for sucking the air in a container; a discharge port for discharging the sucked air to the outside of the container; a communication passage for connecting the suction port and the discharge port; and a change-over valve for changing the communication passage openably, wherein the suction means operates at the suction stroke to suck the air from the inside of the container thereby to establish a low-oxygen state.
The electric cooker, as proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-206907, is enabled to establish a low-oxygen state in a container by the aforementioned structure so that it can cook such a soup automatically as prevents the oxidations and deteriorations of nutritious components. Because of the large structure and heavy weight of that suction pump, however, a cover mounting the pump thereon is enlarged not only in the structure but also in the weight thereof. Thus, said cover becomes hard for the works of the worker and causes serious stresses on the container so that it causes a breakage of the container in the worst case.